That is exactly my plan! I can not take this as an independentstudy because I have no room in my schedule, so therefore it is basiclly justme and a friend of mine, studying outside of school. We have a teacheradvisor that is very enthusiastic about the subject, but she will mostly justbe available to help us when we are extremely lost. As far as homework andtests, we plan to do the problem sets in the textbooks, then write someourselves and give them to each other for extra practice. We plan to followthe Acorn Book's breakdown of test material very closely and hope that thiswill be adequate preparation for the AP exam. Again, I would like to thankyou and everyone else on this Group for assisting me in my endeavor.

Al Coons recently reported the existence of the first test-preparation book for AP Statistics, as follows:

I just scanned one of the six practice tests. I do not know if they arereally good, but what a valuable resource at this point. It waswonderful....I discoverd topics I have not covered well enough and struggledthrough some of the multiple choice questions since I was not exactly surewhat they were asking not the questions fault but just like my students, Iam use to focusing on certain topics and asking questions in certain ways). Detailed nswers are provided for all questions.

For those of you like me - first year teaching a full course in statisticsand really not sure how to prep my students for this exam - I would nothestitate to order this book immediately. It arrive in just 3 days.

I never heard of any of the authors (which is not to be critical of them or their work). But common sense would suggest that the first approximation is not likely to be the best one. Nevertheless, almost ANY systematic preparation at this point probably would help. The six practice exams, in particular, are likely to be useful. I would say run--do not walk--to your telephone and order the book. It's about $20 and, with S/H, my bill came to $24.90.

My guess is that, another year, people who have been more intimately involved with the AP course and its development may come up with a better book. But the REA book is the only one available now, and it could not have come at a better time.

============================================== Bruce King Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Western Connecticut State University 181 White Street Danbury, CT 06810 (kingb@wcsu.ctstateu.edu)